Chef David Chang has finally made his debut for his first restaurant in Los Angeles!! YAY!!! The long, anticipated wait has finally come true to all of David Chang’s foodie fans who live in SoCal. Not only that, this is Chef David Chang’s FIRST restaurant in the West Coast. WOOT WOOT! Before that, his famous Momofuku restaurants were in Las Vegas (the closest). On January 23, 2018, Majordomo opens its doors for the first time to introduce Asian American fusion cuisine in a very industrial yet chic style.
It’s rather located in a very sketchy and empty space. There is scarce street parking available nearby. You’ll see random cars parked in front of steel garage doors, black gates and brick walls. It’s very barren. There is NOTHING ELSE nearby.. until you walk towards the bright Chinese red lanterns hanging outside of the restaurant. (Maybe they’re there for Lunar New Year, maybe they’re there forever. I don’t know). But once you enter through the front doors, you enter into a busy and bustling industrial space that initially capture your eyes to the open kitchen and row of eager chefs cooking and prepping. There is bar seating right along the kitchen area as well as an outdoor seating with extremely warm and cozy heat lamps.
We opted to sit outside. On any given day, especially during dinner rush hour, this restaurant is PACKED. Especially because it just had opened. On the weekends? Even worse! But if you go on a random weekday night (such as Wednesday for me) and come after dinner rush hour (approx 9pm for me; an hour before closing), then you will luck out with no wait at all! Reservations are available to make on OpenTable and on the restaurant’s website itself, but it is extremely hard to book! Every morning at approximately 10am, the website will open ONE day exactly one month ahead of open time slots. It gets booked fast! My friend and I tried every morning for a week and gave up. We decided to test our luck with walk-ins.
I love the attention to detail with the menu. At first touch, the cover for the front and the back feels like very smooth and soft velvet. What exquisite detail and care spent to making something small and minor as a menu.
(the front of the menu)
(the back of the menu)
I really like the simplicity of the dark wooden color of the table in soft contrast with the dark gray cloth and utensils; the slender long necks of the utensils that lead up to wide spoon and long fork.
eggs and smoked roe. When I first ordered this bing, I thought it only came with the eggs and fish eggs. Haha, I just realized this is a “double” egg order! 😉 But it also comes with flatbread! Every menu item from the bing menu comes with bing. Bing is a wheat-floured Chinese flatbread that is round and disk-shaped. It is very soft and fluffy.
How to eat: Use the provided small spoon to jam up the eggs and mix with the fried onions and what not. Spread onto the ping bread. And eat! 🙂
This may not have a flavor that was bursting and screaming, but it was very good. I actually liked the mild flavors with the ping bread. The occasional burst of roe in the mouth was a pleasant surprise. The eggs were poached with a soft and silky yolk. The egg white mold was extremely soft and delicate. Chef David Chang really knows how to cook eggs!
fried butterball potatoes, salsa seca, peanuts. This definitely looks and tastes like a refreshing yet warm granola bar in its raw form. The potatoes are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Reminds me of a gourmet version of steak fries. The peanuts are still in its shell so I found it a bit odd that I have to de-shell the peanuts first! I tried the first one with the shell thinking that it was how he wants us to eat it, but nope! Too weird and definitely not digestible. The little grains were very crunchy.
jumeokbap, seaweed, avocado, sesame. This is a hands-on appetizer! Wear the provided plastic gloves, mix up the ingredients in the mixing bowl, and form little rice balls with your hands. And eat!
Here is my first rice ball! I would like it if they had gloves smaller for my small hands! The balls were very soft and mushy. They didn’t exactly form into firm balls. I could taste a generous amount of soft avocado and maybe some mayonnaise? I ended up eating with my chopsticks like any Asian would do!
crispy pork belly, green papaya, Bibb lettuce, chili sauce. It felt like a must to order pork belly because of his famous pork buns from Momofuku. The dish is one of the cheapest protein dishes, with other meats going up to over $100. Here are 5 very thick pork slices with extremely thick and crispy pork skins still attached. I like the small palm size white rice provided. Put some rice in the lettuce with the pork belly and dip your little protein-style pork sandwich into the chili sauce. The chili sauce is more sour with just a hint of a kick (not spicy at all)! The pork was very tender, soft and fatty.
Majordomo has many other dishes and I almost wish I came with a bigger party to order more to try more. While good and definitely more accessible in DTLA versus LV and Toronto, I definitely like Momofuku more! I expect to come back again to try his other dishes! 🙂 He has many more exquisitely and visually appetizing dishes. This is just the start to diving into all of Majordomo.
